Business Advice in Three Words

by Neil Patel on February 3, 2010

Don’t you hate it when people give you advice that’s confusing and complicated? I have found that the best advice is typically the simplest. So, I decided to take a page out of Dharmesh Shah’s book and give you business advice in 3 words.

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Let’s just take #1, 14 and 22. We are often told time is money and it’s not to be wasted, but then we are told it’s (money) not everything. In my experience, when you don’t have it (money) it is everything. As you get older you hopefully acquire more of it, but you also lose time. This leaves me stuck in a self created seesaw of accomplishing both #31 and #52.

Yes, it’s true that simple advice is best. But when a newbie comes and starts learning, he doesn’t get it. It’s even TOO simple (meaning too vague, no concrete action plan, possibilities, too abstract). They look for complex plans, step-by-step examples and read tons of stuff.. then process it for long time or just procrastinate and then after a year or a few years even, they come fur circle and start seeing how the simple advice was right! Then they start valuing it! T
This is the paradox for me which I had went through also, whether learning about business, gaining muscle, self-improvement.. I say this not to say this post sucks, it doesn’t! I wonder if you had the same experience?

get comfortable chair
ok, this seems a little selfish but considering most entrepreneurs sit in front of a desk/computer for many many hours a day, i think it’s good advice.
it may seem silly to think of such a luxury when you’re being super-scrappy trying to launch a business – ok maybe you shouldn’t drop a lot of quan on a chair if you have absolutely no money – but getting a nice chair is a good investment. i would consider it one of the first luxury purchases you should make for yourself and your employees. what is more important than your health? you don’t want back problems when you’re 60.
i’ve also found it to be very conducive to lucubration. i guess this came to mind b/c i recently ordered a herman miller embody chair… it’s arriving next week and i’m so excited! i’m going to be doing an unboxing and full review of it when it comes, so if anyone’s interested in the review, search my blog for “embody.” i’ve already put up a preview/review.

Those statements are only applicable in minor situations, and only if they do not conform to other standards. Hire friends if they are the right person for the job. Many of the most successful business around today have a corporate circle of college friends/family.

So how are clients not friends. In most lines of business they need to be your best friends. You need to know their wants, desires, and needs. The only way you can provide your portion of your relationship with a client/customer is by being what is classically termed as friend.

Sounds like you got burned at some point. The key to remember is that they would have done it whether or not they were your friend. Good workers make good workers, just because they are a friend does not make them a good worker.

Though these are just three words advice, there is lot of depth in each of these. All the entreprenuers would be successful if they could just follow all these statements. But they are not and it is not easy to follow all of them.
As many people say, it is easy to give advices on the basis of the past experiences, but for the other person since he did not himself experiences it, it is difficult for him to follow though he knows that it might be beneficial for him however simple it is.

Those selling skills that I learned in those sales careers have helped me dramatically in my own business, and I preach to new business owners all the time that if they truly want to be successful, then they must learn sales.

This is one thing a lot of politicians could stand to learn. Drop the ego, find the ability for funding and have really really smart people surrounding you to help you make the best decisions possible. Never underestimate the power of intelligent friends!

Great post, Neil! I decided to add a post on my blog with the advice I came up with and directing readers here. This is what I’ve come up with so far…

Love your job
Respect the competition
Write that down
Volunteer your time
Always give credit
Make hard decisions
Accept a challenge
Don’t over commit
Don’t under estimate
Control the controllables
Always be changing
Don’t get comfortable
Use Plan B

Another Great post neil and I love the way you organized and made it easy to tweet. Keeping it simple is great, I’ve always love “what’s important now” and “fail forward fast” these have helped me to stay on track when I had no clue where the track had gone, know what I mean?

I dont know if i belive this one. Why because becoming an entrepreneur usualy is the way you were raised. If you grew up poor your going to want to become rich. And you were born poor so if you born rich you will most likely be lazy, and spoiled.

Not necessarily… fame isn’t always money. There are plenty of famous people in this world that are dead broke. Even though you may want money and fame know, if you get both, you’ll end up just wanting the money with no fame. Fame isn’t all it’s made up to be.

If you only ask 10% of your customers ‘how are we doing’ and only 10% of them reply you end up with a 1% response rate. Offer 100% of your customers the opportunity to feedback and wahey you get a lot more customer knowledge and as we all know what does customer knowledge make….

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This is absolutely true. I have had one raise, and my husband has had two significant raises in the last two years. I really think that it’s due to the face that successful companies will always be the positive and forward moving ones.

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About Neil Patel

Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations. Neil has also been awarded Congressional Recognition from the United States House of Representatives. Continue reading